Taking Action

I truly believe that living green is a great way to help the environment and reduce your contribution to climate chnge. Bringing your own bag to the grocery store, being conscious of the clothing you wear, and choosing what to buy and how much to buy are all great examples.

But while individual change definitely helps, making individual changes while advocating systemic change creates the biggest change.

When I refer to systemic change, I mean changing or creating legislation that focuses on mitigating or reducing large-scale behaviors that contribute to man-made climate change. I.e., creating limits on the amount of carbon emissions that factories can produce, monitoring pollution levels in bodies of water near factories, etc.

What 2020 Has Shown Us So Far

When social distancing/quarantine guidelines were put into place because of COVID-19, daily global carbon emissions dropped by about 17% (100 million metric tons to 83 million metric tons). Non-essential workers worked from home, flights stopped, and cars started gathering dust in the garage. But this created a few bright spots in the middle of the

pandemic. Air and water pollution in major cities began to clear, noise pollution dropped, and animals began to reappear in the unexpected peace. People were hopeful that this meant environmental change was coming.

Nitrogen dioxide levels over southern Europe from January to March

But this change only came about because people were forced to stay at home. Once economies began to open again, daily global carbon emissions increased dramatically until they were just about back at their previous levels (again, 100,000,000 metric trons). In fact, some countries might overcompensate; their daily carbon emissions might rise above previous levels to deal with the economic recession that is occurring.

Plus, forcing people to stay at home only reduced daily global carbon emissions by 17%. What about the other 83,000,000 metric tons of emissions? Power plants still needed to run. Some factories were forced to stay open. And what about Amazon, the billion dollar online shopping empire? Amazon alone released 51,170,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019, a 15% increase from its 2018 level of 44,400,000 million metric tons.

The drop in daily global carbon emissions shows that the individual does have an impact on the environment; if all of us make the right changes to our daily habits, then we could have a significant impact on the environment. But the largest changes need to come from legislation and systemic change. Change that you can influence.

What Can I Do?

It can be difficult to know where to start. It feels impossible to create change as one person. So let's start small.

Pensacola recently received a $75,000 grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as part of the department's Florida Resilient Coastlines Program. This grant will allow for an assessment on the climate change threats that will directly affect Pensacola and the surrounding area, such as coastal flooding, erosion, and ecosystem changes. The assessment will take about a year, running from August 2020 to July 2021, ending with recommendations and guidelines from the assessment force that will ultimately influence local policy. According to the press release, the City of Pensacola will provide updates to the public as the year goes on.

But you can go further. Take just two minutes and send a quick email to pio@cityofpensacola.com to ask about the project and if there's anything you can do to help. Maybe you just want to know which areas will be affected by this investigation the most. Maybe you want to know what changes they're thinking of making. Ask if they will release information in the form of announcements or if they'll update the public with regular city council meetings. If you don't want to email, follow @CityofPensacola on social media or sign up for email/text notifications through Notify Me (click the link on "press release" for more information).

You can also attend Pensacola's Environmental Advisory Board meetings (by livestream until the foreseeable future). They hold meetings monthly to "review and make recommendations" for Pensacola environmental legislation. The public can make their own suggestions and make sure that their voices are heard in the legislation created.

Show your interest. Keeping yourself informed is the key to making great changes. The more interest that the public shows, the more policy is inclined to change.

Here are a few important links that you can look at.

• An explanation of the Resilient Coastlines Program

• Pensacola's press release concerning the Resilient Coastlines grant

• Instructions on how to participate in Pensacola board meetings

• Environmental Advisory Board meeting schedule

• Past Environmental Advisory Board meeting minutes and agendas

Something to Think About

Advocating for policy change works best when you can see its effects and know that you're contributing to them. It is gratifying to know that you're advocating for a good cause, but when you see your efforts come to fruition, that's even more motivating.

Take Project Greenshores. Project Greenshores is a habitat restoration and creation project in downtown Pensacola. It creates "living shorelines" out of oysters that will eventually grow natural flora while also protecting from larger waves and storms. Before living shorelines were put into place, erosion was rampant. Vegetation was scarce, and people living close to the water were seeing parts of their property falling away.

However, the effects of Project Greenshores have already been seen. This project is ongoing and extensive, but the first site of the project was completed in 2003, right before Hurricane Ivan devestated Pensacola. The hurricane washed away part of the road on I-10. But the roads behind Project Greenshores were barely damaged, if at all. Without question, this showed the powerful effects that this green project could have. The success provided the motivation to continue the project to this day.

If you're interested in the project, read a bit more about it on these pages.

• General information on Project Greenshores

• A PBS Report on Living Shorelines (4:10 for information specific to Pensacola

If Advocacy Isn't Your Thing

Maybe you don't want to influence legislation, but you still want to educate yourself and understand what you can do or what's going on around you.

Watch a TED talk about climate change and what is being done. Watch an animation. Tune into a Pensacola Environmental Advisory Board and just listen. Take some classes at the Ever'man grocery store downtown. Follow some environmentalist social media accounts. Keep yourself updated on your city.

The more that you understand and learn about, the more you can improve upon yourself. It is true that legislation is the most important thing that needs changing. But improving upon yourself and your own habits is the next best thing.

Here are a few links that you can look at:

• Ever'man events calendar

• Keep Pensacola Beautiful - volunteering, education, and community

• Ocean Hour - weekly cleanups and plastic bottle collection

• Pensacola & Perdido Bay Estuary Program - address water quality and legislation with meetings open to the public

What I want you to take away from this is that there are so many ways you can create an impact and contribute to mitigating climate change. It's best to change your own habits and advocate for systemic change at the same time. But even if you don't want to do that, you can still stay educated, find out what's going on, or just participate in community events.

This doesn't mean your personal habits aren't important. They are. But if you can't change everything, you can still do something.

Live green everyone!